---Heartfire, 1st, 4E 201 (cont)---

Around that time I found the huge bedroom of the "slave". She was indeed sleeping tight. Since there were still two guards around, if the woman was to be trusted, I moved on. I had to find them first. I found the guard's room, where a guard was eating. I stabbed him in the neck from behind. It was almost mechanical to me. This all shouldn't have happened but it was me or them and I don't want to die, or be tortured to death. Being stabbed in the neck is probably not so bad a death, I think I severed the spine because he instantly fell face first in his plate and was dead. At this point I didn't really feel all that much any more. I just had the aim in mind, finding the last guard, the woman who hit me what feels like almost dead with her sword flat against my head, which is still pounding by the way.

So I sneaked around the mansion or what it was, because it was a really strange building with few windows and all of them were up high, so you couldn't see outside.

Then I heard her. "I know what you did. You murdered Thorig." It was the woman, I recognized the voice. She was yelling loudly. She repeated it. "Come here you worthless piece of dirt and I will end you quickly. I promise.". She was in the throne room, pacing it up and down, yelling. It was quite clear that I cannot stab her in the back. The others were sleeping and not paying attention, because they seemed to think that there was no threat. But she found one of the bodies, she wouldn't just sit down now.

I drew the sword I took from the first guard I killed, and entered the throne room. If not for the life and death situation it must have looked hilarious, a woman, naked except for a collar and a chastity belt, with a dagger tied to a scabbard, sword in hand, entering a throne room, challenging a trained fighter, wearing armor, yielding her greatsword.

She charged me the moment I entered. Taken by surprise I leapt to the side, and she missed her charge. I got up and ran to the other side of the room. She yelled indiscernable insults and such and charged me again, I tried to dodge her but tripped over the edge of a rug. I'm not sure how it happened, but she tripped over me as well and my sword plunged into the side of her chest. Pushing myself away from her with my legs I got back up, while she was crawling on the floor, holding her deep, bleeding wound.

I stepped on her hand which still clenched around the hilt of her great sword and worked the tip of my sword through the armor under her armpit. Then I shoved the sword into her with the weight of my body.

Since all this noise did not prompt anyone to investigate, I assumed that I was now alone in whatever this place was (few rooms, few windows, connected by unusually long hallways? Who would build something like that?). There were no splatters of blood all over me and I didn't notice earlier, but I cut myself or maybe her sword cut me in the leg and it was bleeding, not bad but I needed to do something about it quick.

Kitchens almost always have some bandages and healing herbs, so I went there and bandaged my thigh, which also started to hurt now. In the kitchen were some buckets with water and a few rugs, so I washed myself and cleaned all the blood of me. I fetched my things from the chest near the cell, and went to the "slaves" bedroom, she was still sleeping sound (the chef-woman must have drugged here for sure). I bound her, she came to a little while after. Not a moment too soon. I told her I killed all the guards and I will now have to do what I have to do. I dragged her by her leash through the faux back panel in the kitchen. There was a door in the hallway behind it, I opened it, but there was nothing beyond it.

Just blackness and a slight glimmering of violet. I was not sure what to make of it, so I shoved her into it and since she disappeared, I guessed it must be some kind of portal. I stepped through it and it tossed me into the wilderness near the road to the Solitude lighthouse. The slave-woman was lying in the grass as well. I dragged her some distance away, and hobbled her with the leash, pulling it through eyelets on the boots locked onto her.

I grabbed something to eat from the kitchen and  I was very hungry, completely exhausted and started to tremble for what I just survived. I rested for a while, then started to write this down.

I will now make way back to the compound, hoping that no further complications arise.